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APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS REMINDER Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting 2013, Los Angeles April 9-13th. Session Title: Moving to Berlin – A Growing Laboratory of Urban Thought and Research Organizers: Sandra Jasper, UCL Urban Laboratory; Department of Geography, University College London (UCL) Sam Merrill, Department of Geography, University College London (UCL); Centre of Metropolitan Studies, TU Berlin Julia Binder, Urban Sociology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin - In collaboration with- Karen Till, Department of Geography, National University of Ireland, Maynooth Claire Colomb, Bartlett School of Planning, University College London Session overview and update: Plenary Panel Session: The ‘Moving to Berlin’ paper sessions and panel discussion will now be opened by a plenary panel session titled, ‘Moving to Berlin (I): Los Angeles and Berlin as Urban Laboratories?’ chaired by Karen Till and Claire Colomb and involving members of the L.A. school of urbanism and researchers from Berlin. This panel will launch a series of paper and panel sessions, “Moving to Berlin”, a city that, like Los Angeles, continues to attract critical attention about memory, urban natures and artistic experimentation. Following in the spirit of one of this year's AAG Annual Meeting's emerging themes—“Beyond the Los Angeles School”—this panel brings together an interdisciplinary group of distinguished scholars and writers known for their research about these two indicative cities – Los Angeles and Berlin. Both cities are known for their distinctive histories, socio-political divisions, urban environments, and radical activism, so much so that their spatial imaginaries have become iconic cinematic surfaces upon which visions of urban dystopia have been projected. Based upon their expertise working in one or both cities and in conducting comparative research, panelists will critically reflect upon the approach of classifying a particular city as a ‘school of urban research’. What does it mean to consider L.A. or Berlin as a laboratory of urban thought and research? How does the notion of a ‘school’ or ‘urban lab’ expand or constrict how we theorize cities and urban global networks more generally, whilst at the same time enable in-depth explorations of the specificities of one particular city? Paper Sessions and Panel Discussion: Following the plenary panel session "Moving to Berlin" (II, III, IV & V) will use three paper sessions and a panel discussion to explore some of the key debates in urban research that have emerged from or through the city over the last two decades. As such, the session will examine relationships between Berlin as an empirical field of research and the critical concepts, discourses and debates that characterize its specific intellectual milieu. Following in the spirit of one of this year's AAG Annual Meeting's emerging themes—"Beyond the Los Angeles School"—we seek to critically discuss the potential classification of Berlin as a 'school of urban research' that expands the way we think about cities in general whilst exploring the individual character and peculiarities of Berlin as a growing laboratory of urban thought and research. Berlin-based urban research, including the work of ecologists such as Herbert Sukopp from the 1960s onwards and later urban sociologists like Hartmut Häußermann and Walter Siebel has placed the city at the centre of critical debates on environmental transformation and social change (see Marcuse 1998; Campell 1999; Häußermann 1999). More recently, Berlin has been explored in the context of geo-political transformations and with a particular focus on the "Divided City" (Lachmund 2003; Moss 2009) and "The New Berlin" (Till 2005; Lehrer 2006; Colomb 2011). Consideration of the later has invited critical scholarly debate regarding the role of an "Anglophone consensus" in steering international discussion of Berlin (Latham 2006; Cochrane 2006). As such, a growing corpus of academic urban research has focused on the city since 1989 and can itself be linked to the same geo-political transformations. Thus, the sessions will be limited to a post-1945 time frame, with a particular attention to the period before and after German reunification. With these factors in mind, we hope to achieve the sessions' aims through presentation and discussion of a range of papers that represent recent interdisciplinary scholarship focused on Berlin. Contributors are asked to present their research in ways that have particular relevance and bearing in the Berlin context, but also critically engage with the need to problematize the generalizing tendencies that are intrinsic to the 'paradigmatic city' debate. We are particularly interested in papers, which consider the following three aspects: memory production, urban nature, and acoustic experimentation; and/or the intersections of these themes. However, we also welcome those that explore other prevalent themes. With the intent to continue Latham and Cochrane's discussion, we also strongly encourage papers that problematize the position, role and influence of the academic researcher, especially the international researcher, and their influence or contribution to the themes they study. We will organize three sequential paper sessions. Each paper session will contain four presentations of 15-20 minutes (papers) and one discussant. A final panel discussion session will help summarize the paper sessions and provide an opportunity to continue discussion and reach tentative conclusions. Submissions: Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words along with a short author(s) biography in a single PDF document by email to Sandra Jasper ([log in to unmask]) before 1st September 2012. Please direct any inquiries to: Julia Binder ([log in to unmask]) Successful submissions will be contacted by the 1st October 2012 and will be expected to register and submit their abstracts online at the AAG website by October 24th 2012. Please note a range of registration fees will apply and must be paid before the submission of abstracts.